tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post3376023423014953422..comments2016-12-08T19:56:23.511+00:00Comments on lathophobic aphasia: Πας μη Έλλην Βάρβαρος*Steve Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-79386889324551359812014-06-22T15:35:12.077+01:002014-06-22T15:35:12.077+01:00Athlete,sure. Not so sure about philosopher. When ...Athlete,sure. Not so sure about philosopher. When you say &#39;we wrote some long rebuttals&#39;, do you mean you and I? Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-6444838805920307352014-06-22T15:29:11.032+01:002014-06-22T15:29:11.032+01:00Thanks for stopping by! Last time I was in Greece ...Thanks for stopping by! Last time I was in Greece about 4 years ago I saw that PZ had contributed another piece to ELT news but didn&#39;t read it. Will have a look at the link in a minute. Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-51118226313475390862014-06-22T14:48:50.112+01:002014-06-22T14:48:50.112+01:00Just come across your blog via Mura Nava and am im...Just come across your blog via Mura Nava and am impressed. Writing that drips like fat from the roasting αρνακι. <br /><br />And struck by your reference to Panagiotis Zachariou. Back in the happy days before everything here in Greece went down the plughole we wrote some long rebuttals for ELT News in reply to Panagiotis&#39; philological provocations. Just wondered now if he has survived, and came across this entertaining page about him, describing himself as a philosopher-athlete, and pointing out that the root of the Greek word for god is a verb meaning &quot;to run&quot;. Panagiotis Zachariou runs, therefore...<br /><br />http://cretazine.com/en/crete/crete-life/humans-of-crete/item/1569-panagiotis-zachariou-athlete-philosopherTorn Halveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18179353922087887957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-69138702838086855362014-06-14T20:01:18.761+01:002014-06-14T20:01:18.761+01:00&#39;Bow to your tamers, therefore, lest the chip ... &#39;Bow to your tamers, therefore, lest the chip fall off your shoulders&#39; Bowing would surely cause any chip on the shoulder to fall off... WTF are you on about?Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-73957291910975908292014-06-08T08:16:39.019+01:002014-06-08T08:16:39.019+01:00Wow! Nietsche certainly sums it up quite astutely!...Wow! Nietsche certainly sums it up quite astutely! It explains everything and gives credence to &quot;ΠΑΣ ΜΗ ΕΛΛΗΝ ΒΑΡΒΑΡΟΣ&quot;. Bow to your tamers, therefore, lest the chip fall off your shoulders...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-7857614095525603292011-06-10T22:33:59.466+01:002011-06-10T22:33:59.466+01:00I allowed this chunk of Nietsche to pass the spam ...I allowed this chunk of Nietsche to pass the spam filter because I think I know who posted it. However, I prefer to hear the opinions of the poster rather than this kind of unanalysed appeal to authority.Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-30210040979926911682011-06-10T20:10:42.918+01:002011-06-10T20:10:42.918+01:00«Αποδεδειγμένα σε κάθε περίοδο της εξέλιξής του ο ...«Αποδεδειγμένα σε κάθε περίοδο της εξέλιξής του ο δυτικοευρωπαϊκός πολιτισμόςπροσπάθησε να απελευθερώσει τον εαυτόν του από τους Έλληνες.<br /><br />Η προσπάθεια αυτή είναι διαποτισμένη από βαθύτατη δυσαρέσκεια, διότι οτιδήποτε κι αν δημιουργούσαν (οι Δυτικοευρωπαίοι), φαινομενικά πρωτότυπο και άξιο θαυμασμού, έχανε χρώμα και ζωή στη σύγκριση του με το Ελληνικό μοντέλο, συρρικνωνότανε, κατέληγε να μοιάζει με φθηνό αντίγραφο, με καρικατούρα.<br /><br />Έτσι ξανά και ξανά μια οργή ποτισμένη με μίσος ξεσπάει εναντίον των Ελλήνων, εναντίον αυτού του μικρού και αλαζονικού έθνους που είχε το νεύρο να ονομάσει βαρβαρικό (για κάθε εποχή) ότι δεν είχε δημιουργηθεί στο έδαφος του.<br /><br />Μα ποιοι, επιτέλους είναι αυτοί των οποίων η ιστορική αίγλη υπήρξε τόσο εφήμερη, οι θεσμοί τους τόσο περιορισμένοι, τα ήθη τους αμφίβολα έως απαράδεκτα και οι οποίοι απαιτούν μια εξαίρετη θέση ανάμεσα στα έθνη, μια θέση πάνω από το πλήθος;<br /><br />Κανένας από τους επανεμφανιζόμενους εχθρούς τους δεν είχε την τύχη να ανακαλύψει το κώνειο, με το οποίο θα μπορούσαμε μια για πάντα να απαλλαγούμε απ΄ αυτούς.<br />Όλα τα δηλητήρια του φθόνου, της ύβρεως, του μίσους έχουν αποδειχθεί ανεπαρκή να διαταράξουν την υπέροχη ομορφιά τους!<br /><br />Έτσι οι άνθρωποι συνεχίζουν να νιώθουν ντροπή και φόβο απέναντι στους Έλληνες.<br /><br />Βέβαια, που και που, Κάποιος εμφανίζεται που αναγνωρίζει ακέραια την αλήθεια που δίδασκε ότι οι Έλληνες είναι ηνίοχοι κάθε επερχόμενου πολιτισμού και σχεδόν πάντα τόσο τα άρματα όσο και τα άλογα των επερχόμενων πολιτισμών είναι πολύ χαμηλής ποιότητας σε σχέση με τους ηνίοχους (Έλληνες), οι οποίοι τελικά αθλούνται οδηγώντας το άρμα στην άβυσσο, την οποία αυτοί ξεπερνούν με αχίλλειο πήδημα.»<br /><br />Friedrch Nietzsche<br /><br />(«Η Γένεση της Τραγωδίας», κεφ. XV, 1872)Angelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09981141712052614368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-38262629065469226862011-04-25T20:44:52.699+01:002011-04-25T20:44:52.699+01:00@Anon, thanks for the comment. I have made no slan...@Anon, thanks for the comment. I have made no slanderous references to Zachariou or anybody else. I disagree strongly with some ideas about language that he expressed some ten years ago, that is all, and I was not alone. If all of us who expressed contrary opinions about P.Z.&#39;s ideas in 2003 got the wrong end of the stick, then he obviously was less than clear about what he meant. I don&#39;t see how his cycling victories have any bearing on any of his linguistic ideas, or whether I see eye to eye with him on those. I disagree with quite a few other people&#39;s ideas on matters to do with language and the teaching of language, and of course they disagree with me, as is their right.Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-52491438793672858642011-04-25T20:04:39.530+01:002011-04-25T20:04:39.530+01:00You said, &quot;This sense of superiority some Gre...You said, &quot;This sense of superiority some Greeks have on the basis of nothing more than reflected glory from the ancients is so frustrating - like they themselves need do nothing more than sit on their ass and be effortlessly great because they were born Greek.&quot;<br /><br />What is even more frustrating, Vilges, is a Greek like Zachariou who embodies in the present all that many of you admire about Greece&#39;s glorious past. I, like Rob, chanced upon this blog looking for references to Zachariou; not regarding his book, but his recent victories in local cycling competitions. Owning a house in Vamos, Crete, I was dumbfounded to see a middle-ager, albeit in great physical shape, standing in the victor&#39;s podium flanked by blokes in their twenties and thirties. The man not only has wit and a pen that has obviously cut you deep enough to make slanderous reference to him, but also, recently, at the age of 54 he is beating men half his age in time trials and 100k endurance races.And all this with only one year involvement in the sport.Such spirit is to be envied. And if it&#39;s Greek, all the more so.So please, spare the biased generalizations about Greeks resting in the laurels of their golden past and not producing in the present. Besides, there have always been worthy Hellenes as there have been contemptuous Greeklings in this land that you say you love.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-44815120660917556242010-11-15T18:32:36.710+00:002010-11-15T18:32:36.710+00:00Me neither. I stuck it for about three minutes bef...Me neither. I stuck it for about three minutes before deciding I&#39;d heard it all before - just a compilation of cliches and received ideas from someone who doesn&#39;t know the first thing about language and hasn&#39;t an ounce of critical thinking skills.Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-76170500635820242882010-11-15T18:07:23.280+00:002010-11-15T18:07:23.280+00:00http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752cgHvrPcY
Αν έχε...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752cgHvrPcY<br /><br />Αν έχεις το κουράγιο. Εγώ δεν το άντεξα.theialinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-43405615293542014552010-11-12T19:47:27.547+00:002010-11-12T19:47:27.547+00:00Really? It&#39;s getting worse? Aman! Actually it&...Really? It&#39;s getting worse? Aman! Actually it&#39;s a kind of inferiority complex, isn&#39;t it? A Greek friend of mine once said it was the mentality of poor kids pretending to be princes and princesses. <br /><br />Thanks for the correction and the example. Sounds like the closest equivalent would be the Scottish habit of muttering &#39;Aye. Right.&#39; with totally flat intonation.Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-48906758957655822912010-11-12T19:11:53.104+00:002010-11-12T19:11:53.104+00:00You are right. And it&#39;s getting worse, as our ...You are right. And it&#39;s getting worse, as our socioeconomic situation deteriorates. <br /><br />Re. Not really. It&#39;s used in order to deflate praise or professed enthusiasm. <br />eg- Tι ωραίος ο καινούριος γκόμενος της Σούλας!<br />- Μμμ, σιγά τον πολυέλαιο...<br />(wrinkled nose and downturned mouth add a lot)theialinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-31059237739270329642010-11-12T18:31:36.313+00:002010-11-12T18:31:36.313+00:00This sense of superiority some Greeks have on the ...This sense of superiority some Greeks have on the basis of nothing more than reflected glory from the ancients is so frustrating - like they themselves need do nothing more than sit on their ass and be effortlessly great because they were born Greek.<br /><br />Re the polyelaio idiom - could it also mean something like &#39;who cares?&#39;&#39;So what?&#39;Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-5036383964653073002010-11-12T17:55:13.912+00:002010-11-12T17:55:13.912+00:00Him, of course! Nobody can deal with this aspect o...Him, of course! Nobody can deal with this aspect of greek mentality. Although you have practiced enough with your Saudi students.<br />(as for &quot;siga ton polyelaio&quot;, it actually means &#39;it&#39;s not worth it&#39;)theialinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-18009061036404234502010-11-11T19:04:13.246+00:002010-11-11T19:04:13.246+00:00Who, him or me?Who, him or me?Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-79743823900804021152010-11-10T22:09:52.748+00:002010-11-10T22:09:52.748+00:00άστον, δεν βγάζεις άκρη...άστον, δεν βγάζεις άκρη...theialinanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-20602515882959897292010-11-06T12:21:58.591+00:002010-11-06T12:21:58.591+00:00@ Anonymous, how many times have I heard that one,...@ Anonymous, how many times have I heard that one, do you think? I could have included it in the blog post as another example of the self-aggrandising twaddle I was sending up. Despite my love of Greece, I have no desire whatever to be Greek, or any regret that I&#39;m not.Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-48215468654852443452010-11-06T11:54:18.610+00:002010-11-06T11:54:18.610+00:00You just wish you were Greek. Apart from being a n...You just wish you were Greek. Apart from being a nationality , being Greek means much more than you think.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-91363205968663767752009-03-27T09:37:00.000+00:002009-03-27T09:37:00.000+00:00Hi Rob,What a pity these posts are stuck in the bo...Hi Rob,<BR/><BR/>What a pity these posts are stuck in the bottom drawer of the blog where hardly anyone will access them. <BR/><BR/>I think ‘mockingly lash at’ overstates the case a bit. I was sending up those received ideas about language parroted by Greeks who have heard they are linguistically superior to the rest of us but are not quite sure how. (One I didn’t work in there was ‘Greek has so many strange sounds that we can pronounce any other language easily.’) I’m more scathing about Zachariou’s stuff in ELT News because of its arrogance and subjectivity, and because he would not engage with objections to what he said. After one of his pieces was published around 2003, several letters objecting to his pronouncements were published the following month (including one from me.) We awaited Zach’s refutation. When it came, it was remarkable for its refusal to engage with anything those letters had brought up. As someone subsequently pointed out (this one ran and ran…) Mr Z’s approach to debate was to mention an objection, jeer loudly, chuck in a handful of Greek words then move on and repeat the procedure. If we misunderstood him, which is possible, the fact that everyone misunderstood him suggests that what he had to say was less than crystal clear. <BR/><BR/>In one letter Mr. Z claimed that Greeks somehow have more immediate access to meaning than the rest of us because of the way the Greek language creates words. For example ‘σύζυγος’, is ‘by far superior semantically’ to the English words husband, wife and spouse as it means ‘one bound in the same yoke’. Some words for the same relationship: husband (originally one who tends animals and crops, therefore one who nurtures) Mann (= ‘man’ in German) shok (= ‘companion’ in Albanian) I could say, truthfully, that the idea of being bound in a yoke for life with someone else strikes me as extremely unpleasant, but that is missing the point. The terms are simply tokens that represent the same concept with different sound symbols, using different associations. Zach’s ‘semantic superiority’ is very much in the eye of the beholder.<BR/><BR/>One of his pieces was about love. You know, we English speakers do not know how to love, because we have only the one word, whereas Greek has four, αγάπη, έρως, φιλία, στόργη. As an illustration of the resultant Western lovelessness he cited the censorious reaction of some American ladies when Zach kissed his son, and of some British louts in Crete when Z. put an arm round a male friend who was feeling down. In an earlier piece he had said ‘speakers of Greek are the only ones who have immediate access to the meaning of speech, the only ones who can truly feel what they say’ and that the rest of us are really only ‘like dogs [who] also respond to mono-syllabic or bi-syllabic sounds’. It doesn’t seem to strike him that that sentence is dripping with arrogance and contempt rather than αγάπη and φιλία. The thesaurus on this laptop offers the following words in the lexical field of love (sounds like a Barbara Cartland novel) adoration, affection, ardor, amorousness, attachment, caring, concern, cherishing, compassion, devotion, fancy, favor, fondness, liking, love, lust, passion, tenderness. I don’t believe for a moment that the fact that some of these are of Latin origin makes the concepts inaccessible to English minds. Nor do I believe that this list of 18 words makes English superior to Greek, or that any language is superior to any other. This article and ones it links to say all this better than I can: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1087 I also like this send-up by Prof. Geoffrey Pullum of Zacharoulean-type ideas on language as Zach seemed to be expressing them circa 2003: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002504.html. And a list of articles dealing with the same ideas is here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1081 <BR/><BR/>You say : ‘Although Germanic in its roots, English, like Latin, somehow lost the ability to form compounds the way that Greek and German does. And you must admit that inflection and gender do colour a language nicely.’ I don’t get this. What is so special about compounds? English does them well enough: "Representations of odor plume flux are accentuated deep within the moth brain". Odor plume flux = time variation in airborne smells. (How have we lived without knowing that?) Inuktitut collapses into single words what in English and Greek would be whole sentences. (This is probably what gave rise to the old chestnut about Eskimos having nine, forty-seven or six hundred and fifty five words for snow.) And where does this leave uninflected, genderless languages such as Chinese or Thai?Vilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-36375299258651240982009-03-27T01:44:00.000+00:002009-03-27T01:44:00.000+00:00Χαίρε, Στεφανοφόρε, Στέφανε, Στεφανάκο, Στεφανάκι...Χαίρε, Στεφανοφόρε, Στέφανε, Στεφανάκο, Στεφανάκι, Στεφανούλι που είσαι τόσο δα γλυκάκι και γλυκούλι, (Try to do that with a name or adjective in english!)<BR/><BR/>“To seek a 'true meaning' or 'original meaning' is a waste of time?” PLEASE TAKE THAT BACK!!!, or you run the risk of vindicating misalbionic Zachariou in referring to us Anglophones as the epitomes of the term “Barbarian.” And I can see why he would be right, since according to Greek thought “true meanings” are enshrined within the titan goddess Mnemosyne herself (Μνήμη = Memory, as in mnemonics), mother of the Muses (as in music, museum, to muse and to amuse) and therefore the cornerstone of civilization. The value placed on true meanings by the Greek intelligentsia is even attested by the Athenian philosopher Antisthenes, 450 BC, who held: “Αρχή σοφίας, ονομάτων επίσκεψις» - The principle of wisdom lies in the study of words. (It seems Zack is in good company here.) <BR/><BR/>By the way, “hybrid is an unnatural cross between two species” (English dictionaries skip the “unnatural” part). Its root being "hubris", the word implies that man commits sacrilege when he intervenes in the natural process of things and thus commits hubris - punishable by the gods! In other words, “Do not mess with Mother Nature”. As you know, hybrids (like mules) are generally sterile; they cannot reproduce. As more and more hybrids are displacing fertile plants and vegetables, the world will eventually be at the mercy of the large firms which monopolize hybridic seeds, for farmers will not be able to produce their own! Not to mention all the chemicals that go into the process… And if that is not enough punishment, then what is? So maybe it is not "a waste of time" to look for the etymon - truth in a word. Greek makes this truth more accessible, does it not?<BR/><BR/>“…does this mean Greeks do not need to 'grapple'?” you ask. <BR/>On the contrary, they grappled with meanings long before us and had the time to take it all in and produce such diction the world had never or will never outdo in clarity. As for German, granted it has a plasticity resembling Greek, and I highly respect it. Why even its syntax is similar, but take the Latin and the Greek root words and notions out of Goethe’s German and you might just as well be reading Tarzan. Did you know that 18th and 19th century Germans were so obsessed with Greek, in particular, that they ended up being the best lexicographers of the language? <BR/><BR/>Although Germanic in its roots, English, like Latin, somehow lost the ability to form compounds the way that Greek and German does. And you must admit that inflection and gender do colour a language nicely. <BR/><BR/>As for my appreciation of English, I need not elaborate. My love of the language is self-evident in the way I write it. Being a native speaker of English and an avid student of Greek makes me all the more objective in comparing the two languages. And yes, I deeply appreciate our literary heritage from Chaucer to T.S. Eliot and beyond, but any way I turn it I, like the irritating Greeks you mockingly lash at, find the Hellenic language generally superior to ours. <BR/><BR/>Concerning Zachariou, I agree, as I earlier mentioned, that he can be quite annoying the way he voices his opinion. I have seen this in his texts. What drives him, though, is not so much his contempt for English (being a bilingual himself) as his disdain for the cultural void of the English speaking world and its Erysichthonian influence on the planet.<BR/><BR/>Thank you for bearing with me.<BR/><BR/>Έρρωσθε φίλτατεAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-61256428031130211972009-03-25T23:19:00.000+00:002009-03-25T23:19:00.000+00:00Hi Rob,I know what 'hybrid' means in modern Englis...Hi Rob,<BR/><BR/>I know what 'hybrid' means in modern English (a cross between two species) and that the word derives from Greek 'hubris' meaning overweening pride that shames its perpetrator. The Greek origin is utterly irrelevant to the contemporary English meaning (See 'Etymological fallacy' on wikipedia) Words are borrowed from language to language, and their meanings change, since words are just tokens for meaning. The meaning does not inhere in the 'original' word. (Who knows what the original meaning was anyway?) To seek a 'true meaning' or 'original meaning' is a waste of time. <BR/><BR/>'…the westerner, who, when forced to grapple with high concepts, is forced to coin new words mostly through Greek and Latin roots.' Is there not something unbearably patronising here? We poor sods 'grapple' with 'high concepts' - does this mean Greeks do not need to 'grapple'? Western writers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance used Greek and Latin as linguae francae, which explains the use of Greek and Latin roots. German has, nevertheless, been very good at avoiding Latin and Greekisms and it has not prevented Goethe et. al. from producing some pretty meaty stuff. <BR/><BR/>As for the stuff about English being a mongrel tongue that does not warm the heart, well, this is falling in with Zachariou's (and the Greeks') chief failing, total subjectivity. Personally I DO respond to English, powerfully, and to say that it is lacking in soul is, forgive me, utterly bizarre. How much English literature do you read? How many local varieties and dialects do you know of? Nothing impoverished here, quite the reverse!<BR/><BR/>People use and create language, it is not the other way around. Anyone who seriously sets out to study English (or French, or German, or Albanian, or Hindi, or Arabic...)soon realises the extent of the task before him if he is realistic. Languages are WITHOUT EXCEPTION quite extraordinarily complex assemblages of sound, pitch and meaning, with layer upon layer of nuance conveyed by vocabulary and intonation. Mastering ANY language is a lifetime's work.<BR/><BR/>Sorry for the lecture, and for the haphazzard presentation of these responses. I really do find Zachariou's ideas on language profoundly irritating, because he prefers thε self-congratulatory shit he spiels about Greek to serious and objective consideration of language as a phenomenon, which ought to compel his awe rather than his contempt.<BR/><BR/>Σε χαιρετώ<BR/><BR/>ΣτεφανάκοςVilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-20686379682347051702009-03-25T19:56:00.000+00:002009-03-25T19:56:00.000+00:00Why Steve, I would have thought your being an Engl...Why Steve, I would have thought your being an English teacher you would have understood the whole sentence, including its relative clause: “…the westerner, who, when forced to grapple with high concepts, is forced to coin new words mostly through Greek and Latin roots." Or maybe you are just being selective… for your command of English is at least commendable. Isn’t it sad that our prematurely aged world, as Zachariou puts it, did not enjoy the privilege to self-ferment linguistically enough to render the Greek language obsolete in English? Who knows? We may have even coined “Peopleholdecy” instead of “Democracy” or “connexia” (oops! Latin root) instead of “Harmony”, etc. We may thus have bid good riddance to all these irritating pompous Greeks reminding us of our inadequacies. For that matter we could have produced beautiful statues of our own to adorn our museums with. <BR/>Seriously Steve - granted, our mongrel tongue is one of the world’s swiftest tools of communication and has invaded all corners of the globe, but any way you look at it, it is lacking in soul, for it does not warm the heart as other, more indigenous languages like Greek. In my opinion, the soul of these Greek and Latin words borrowed into English is available only to the speakers of these languages where their derivatives abound in daily life (although in the case of Latin to Italian it is more difficult). <BR/>Greeks are in love with their language in a way we can never be with ours. And they do not flaunt it exclusively to foreigners either. I have chanced upon interminable discussions amongst non-specialist Greeks over the historical roots of their words. Their very language is a laboratory of thought. The more Greek I learn during my twelve-year sojourn here, the more I realize how impoverished the west is. It is no wonder classicists the world over yearn for a Greek renaissance. The other day for instance, I was trying to translate the word βίωμα as in βιωματικός ποιητής (empirical poet), although the dictionary offers «experience», believe me it hardly suffices to fulfill its powerful meaning. <BR/>Let’s not complain, though. We westerners can boast greater materialistic production, greater economies, greater organizations and so on. Greece is devoid all that and plagued by so much more, but let’s give credit to where credit is due. When it comes to light, language and culture, it is at least one up on us.<BR/>Over to you with a question. What does the word "hybrid" mean to you? Try this without consulting a dictionary.<BR/>Χαιρετώ σεAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-18116921810826803742009-03-25T17:13:00.000+00:002009-03-25T17:13:00.000+00:00Hi RobI chose ‘lathophobic aphasia’ as a blog titl...Hi Rob<BR/><BR/>I chose ‘lathophobic aphasia’ as a blog title because I’m a language teacher and I have always thought it a particularly ridiculous piece of pretentious jargon! It was coined in the seventies by Earl Stevick, who could just as easily have called it 'being silenced by the fear of error'. Everybody knew perfectly well what he was getting at. Now if I understand some out-of-the-way specialist jargon because I speak Greek, do I somehow understand it LESS than a Greek does because Greek is not my first language? Any Greek (or speaker of Greek) would decode ‘lathophobic aphasia’ with no problem, because, well, it’s a coinage based on Greek. So what PZ is saying when he writes ‘The plasticity of the Greek language affords its user greater immediacy to meanings within its lexis than the westerner’ boils down to ‘Greeks understand words coined from their own language, and non-Greek speakers don’t.’ Well, what a surprise! <BR/><BR/>SteveVilges Suolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-80568383214265888872009-03-25T15:55:00.000+00:002009-03-25T15:55:00.000+00:00Hi again, Vilges (or is it Steve?), I can see ...Hi again, Vilges (or is it Steve?),<BR/> I can see what you mean by P.Z’s treatment of dissenters being ‘arrogant’, for that is his general tone when dealing with polemics. He does come on as a conceited, offensive bloke until you get to know him. Maybe this is due to his Special Forces background and his obsession with extreme sports.It makes for a unique combination of a warrior gone egghead! However, judging from his articles published locally and various magazines throughout the country, (my Greek wife reads everything he writes) I can assure you that this aggressive tone is indiscriminately leveled at his contemporary Greeks as well as the West. In a nutshell, he likens the world west of Greece to a six year old, force-fed by its Roman tutor to adopt the behaviour of a middle aged man, thus robbing it of its adolescent and youth stages of self development. <BR/> He goes on to state that “just as one who has had the impulses of childhood and the self discovery of adolescent sexuality suppressed (hence the complete absence of a European equivalent to the Greek verb ερωτεύομαι ‘to fall in love’ as ‘Semi-barbarian’ attests) inevitably resorts to anomalous behaviour in later life, so has the West thrown itself into such gluttony to fill its primary void, that it is doomed to suffer the plight of Erysichthon” – a mythological king whose unchecked consumption led to his devouring himself, cursed by Demeter (mother Earth). <BR/> Although every human populace at some point broke off from barbarism and moved toward civilization, we cannot deny that Zachariou has a point when he stresses that civilization was “forced” on the west, whereas conditions enabled it to “brew” in Greece. He equates the Archaic Age to Greek childhood, the Classical Age to adolescence and youth, Hellenistic Times to middle age and Byzantine times to crippling old age (You can imagine the church does not like him, in keeping with Kazantzakis). He goes on to say that at present Greece is suffering from all the symptoms of senility, amnesia and the dementia accompanying a dying organism. (I must admit, that the declining birthrate in the country and the demoralization inflicted upon this once traditional society by the western mass media is killing off Hellenism in its birthplace.)<BR/> Through his metaphorical approach to history he goes on to state that the Romans (the first westerners to come in touch with the Greeks) were cultural-linguistically traversing early childhood when they met up with the Hellenistic Greeks. He therefore likens the Roman to “a child suddenly finding itself in a playground for fifty year-olds. The precocious little Latin tried to emulate the behaviour of the Greek he admired. However, devoid the maturity that can only come with the passing of time, the little Roman turned the theatre into a coliseum blood theatre, the philosophical symposium into a vomit-inducing banquet, the City State into an all-consuming empire, the involved free citizen into a regimented subject and Eros into Sex…” Don’t know about you Vilges, but all this does painfully ring of our world today, does it not?<BR/> As for language, it must also be admitted that Modern Greek, boasting over 90% of the same vocabulary used by Homer and Pericles, certainly has an advantage over all other European languages whose warp and woof is essentially Greek. Your Lathophobic Aphasia title, for instance, not to mention its derivatives is in everyday vogue amongst Greeks, whilst we employ such terms to sound sophisticated and quasi-scientific; and that only after consulting etymological dictionaries.This vindicates Zachariou when he says "The plasticity of the Greek language affords its user greater immediacy to meanings within its lexis than the westerner, who, when forced to grapple with high concepts,is forced to coin new words mostly through Greek and Latin roots." <BR/> In one of his articles entitled “The Terrorism of –ism” he also deals with “chauvinism” and other ism–suffixed totem and taboo words, loosely used by the media-trained masses to discredit truths in a politically correct fashion. I’ll post it to you if my wife Thaleia, gets it in electronic form.<BR/>Thanks for lending an ear to all this in your blogspot, for as I am very interested in anything Greek, I enjoy tackling the subject.<BR/> All the best<BR/> RobAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com